Ruminations

My excellent friend Jason Young is deep into the part of his year where he writes and transcribes hundreds of pages of sheet music for Baylor University’s annual Sing event. Since he recently harassed me for not having posted anything to the weblog lately, I thought I’d take a stab at pretending to be him for half an hour and posting the results. Here they are:

This is the solo from The Beatles “For No One”, which my dear horn-playing Abigail has been after me to transcribe for her for months. It is transposed here into what is (I think) an easy key for horn, and hopefully a comfortable range. (Jason, let me know if I’ve gotten that wrong!)

The big obstacle to doing this up to now has been notation software — I’ve been reluctant to shell out for the commercial packages, but all of the free/open-source stuff I’ve found has quickly made me crazy. But this morning I stumbled across MuseScore, an actively-developed, well thought-out application that allowed me to learn it well enough to knock out this simple score in about 30 minutes.

I’m really pleased with the program, and am looking forward to more easily be able to do some sheet music for O’Malarkey, the Irish band I’m playing with, as well. If you ever have occasion to write out music, take a look! (It handles scores, lyrics, and chord names as well.)